Embracing The Season of the Witch: Scrying, Aries Full Moon, and October Magic

The veil is thinning, witches! As we step into October, we're welcomed by that magical sensation when our witchy practices align perfectly with the season around us. There's something deliciously freeing about wearing ghost shirts and setting up altars without anyone batting an eye – even if we'll still be doing these things long after the Halloween decorations come down.

This week, we're embracing the potent Aries full moon energy arriving on October 6th. Aries brings us clarity, empowerment, and the perfect fiery backdrop for shedding what no longer serves us. When combined with the Queen of Swords that appeared in our tarot reading, we're receiving a clear message: it's time to cut cords, gain clarity, and step more fully into our authentic selves. What better time to ask yourself those deeper questions about identity and legacy than when the veil between worlds grows thin?

October uniquely amplifies our divination practices. When cultures across the world agree that this is the time for connecting with ancestors and spirit, there's something genuine happening in the energy around us. Whether you're an experienced card reader or curious about trying scrying for the first time, this is your moment. I've shared instructions for creating your own scrying mirror and offered suggestions for simple divination tools you can make yourself. The beauty of this practice is that it should be playful – we chose this path for its freedom and creativity, not rigid dogma.

Remember that witchcraft is about joy as much as it is about power. As you journal about your dominant clair sense and explore new divination methods this week, approach it with curiosity and playfulness. The magic happens when we allow ourselves to experiment without judgment. After all, as I often remind my coven: "We are not in a stuffy church for a reason. We want to have fun, we want to create."

Chapters

• 0:23 Season of the Witch Begins
• 2:35 Aries Full Moon Energy
• 6:45 Queen of Swords Tarot Reading
• 10:02 Upcoming Witch Events
• 15:49 Divination & Thinning Veils
• 22:48 Creating Your Own Scrying Tools
• 25:10 Journal Prompts & Encouragement

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:12

Hey witches, this is our cozy coven chat for the week of October 5th. We have arrived into the season of the witch. Cue that song, whatever version you like. I personally really like the Donovan version. I know it's hokey, but it's pure, you know what I mean? Um, but I like all the versions. I have quite the long witchy playlist myself. But anyway, we are here. It's we're closer to Sawin, the veil has thinned. It's just, I don't know. It's the best time to be a witch. It's like when all the things we do, everyone just thinks we're being seasonal about it. You know what I mean? Like all the weird clothes I wear. People are like, uh, I love your ghost shirt. It's so seasonal. It's like, yeah, I'll be wearing it in January too. But anyway, so we're in that energy. We're also in the full moon and Aries energy, which is tomorrow. Then we're gonna talk about that. Um, and we're gonna go over our uh card, pull a card, and we'll go over some other things. So, first I want to say uh thank you for listening. And if you are listening, please subscribe wherever you listen to, and please share with someone who you think might like it too. Um, I'm a small time creator, I'm a one-woman show. I appreciate all the help I can get, trust me. Uh, a couple of things I want to go over is if you missed my uh Belief Being and Beyond with Granddaughter Crow, we were uh live yesterday. If you missed that premiere, you can still listen to the episode. So you can listen to it or if you're listening to this podcast. So look for the podcast Belief Being and Beyond with Granddaughter Crow. It'll be the Thinning as a Veil Thins series, and it's my episode, which is all about this time of year, right? Which this will be all of October I'm gonna be talking about Sawin, and I'll be giving you some good things to do for the season. Um, Salin is officially like November 1st, so really all of October is Sawan Eve for me and maybe for you too. And so we're leading up, we're getting ready. So that's kind of the energy we're in, and we have a full moon in Aries. Let's talk about that first. So the full moon in Aries is Monday, October 6th at 8 47 p.m. Pacific Daylight Standards time, and Aries is the opposite sign of Libra, right on the wheel, and that's why it's in this Libra sun season. We have the Aries moon. Um, Aries moon is all about empowerment, it's about shedding what doesn't serve you, it's about um how we see ourselves, it's about using fire. I think for this moon, whatever you do, if you're okay with lighting a candle, you need a candle. Like Aries is such fiery energy. Aries is the child of the zodiac, right? It's like the beginning of the zodiacs, it's like the baby, it's how we see ourselves, it's our ego, it's our identity, uh, it's that fiery energy. And so this is a really good time after everything we went through in the eclipse to decide the rest of the year for yourself. Like, how how do you want the rest of the year to go for you, ideally, right? And who are you? And who do you stand for? And how do you see yourself? And you know, what does that mean? It's just make it all about you. Like, take the time to journal about yourself, to really like think about, you know, this is kind of morbid, but it's so in time. I often think about if I were to die, um, what what would people say? Or like, what's the what am I leaving behind? Like, what have I left behind? What's my legacy? And a legacy isn't money, it isn't what we do, it isn't our career, it's connections, it's things we say, it's what we're known for. Like, I'm hoping I'm leaving a legacy of really good cooking. You know what I mean? So it's a time to ask that. And as you know, we're living these slow life, we're really focusing a lot of times on developing ourselves. You know, I feel like the journey's never over. We're constantly evolving and changing and developing who we are, stepping more into ourselves. Like, I feel like, especially once I hit my 30s, I had a pretty clear understanding of who I was, and then now in my 40s, it's like, how can I be her? And that's a good question to ask right now in this Aries full moon energy, is like, who are you and how can you be that person? And is it safe? Do you feel safe unmasking? Do you feel safe being more authentic? And if not, why? And all of those questions, but a really good full moon for that. It's uh and we're in this kind of Salwin energy, so it's a good full moon for you know, if you're looking to opening yourself up to your Claire senses and getting more into divination and your gifts, that's a good full moon to like put it out there. I'm ready for that. That's part of how I see myself. I'm ready for that. So, yeah, there's that energy. We're obviously in the autumn energy still. Hopefully, it's cooling off where you are, and you're starting to really see the signs of autumn and you know, all the things that go with autumn, which is shedding and letting go. It's a very cleansing energy, I think, that comes with autumn, similar to spring. You know, it's like this kind of breath of fresh air. I really love opening the house up during spring and fall. I just feel like it's very cleansing. Personally, on that full moon, I'm gonna be cleansing the house just because I feel like ever since the eclipse season, it can't be cleansed enough. Like, just get it out of here. Um, so I'll probably be cleansing the house. I will do a tarot reading looking at the rest of the year. So we're October, November, December. We have three months left. I'm gonna do a reading for the rest of the last three months. Maybe October's a good time to do that because it's divination time. Like your everything is a little easier to understand, so it's a good time to look at things. And I'm probably going to journal about who I am and like where I see myself going and really contemplate that. Let's pull a tarot card and see if that gives us some insight too. When I pull these cards, by the way, I have already like opened myself up and I concentrate on the collective audience of the podcast. So not the collective in general, just the people listening. That helps me narrow it down. Okay, we have the Queen of Swords, which if you listened last week, we had the Queen of Wands. And like I said last week, I think I'm I'm a queen, obviously, and I think a lot of queens listen to this podcast. Um Queen of Swords, perception, honesty, truth, clarity, right? Because she's swords, so the swords represent intellect and clarity and knowledge, and she's not, you know, it's not like the Queen of Cups is like in the control of her emotions and like one with her emotions, not controlling them, but like aware of them. The Queen of Wands is not opposite of that. Just because she is leading with her mind and her thinking doesn't mean that she's not in touch with her emotions. She's very balanced. All these queens are very balanced, and interesting because when I look at this, even though it's not connected with Aries, it feels like an appropriate card for an Aries full moon. Because Aries is very like in the head, very headstrong, very ram, you know, it's like clarity, very logical. Um, this is because of the Aries I know in my life, but very logical, very like clear. And the fire wants to cut away anything that's in the way and like clear. And then we have this Queen of Swords with her sword cutting things away that are not clear. So I think it's a good week to cut cords. If you've never done that, um, there's tons of meditations that have stuff in our cabin, but you can do like a cord cutting ceremony uh on the full moon. Um, so two candles that one represents you, one represents someone else that you feel like you're holding stuff onto or you they're holding on to you. You tie them with a twine, all of this done safely, and you burn, light the candles, and you let that cord be cut that's severed. Um, there's also like spiritual meditation types where you do like a lot of people call an Archangel Michael, and I'm looking at this sword, thinking of Archangel Michael with his fiery sword, cutting cords, but this full moon feels like a good time to cut away all that no longer serves to shed, to get clarity on something. Right? So we have this card coming in with clarity, we have Aries, clarity, just feels fiery, it feels it's time. It's time to cut cut away some crap, clear the energy. Okay, so that's the energy of the week. And remember with full moons, like if you're you work on Monday, you're like, I'm not doing this, you can do something today, right? And um, you don't have to do it at night. We talked about this in our coven. Like, some people just can't do stuff at night, they live in a quiet house or they're tired. You can do stuff in the day. The moon is there, you just don't see her, so it's totally fine. You work it in where you work it in, okay? So that's that. Um, I want to talk a little bit in this episode about um the veil thinning and sowin, divination. And first, though, I want to go over a few things. So on October 21st, it's a new moon, it's our new moon in October. Um, I'm going to be having a little live called the Witch's New Year Portal. So Salwin on the Witches Wheel of the Year is the new year, and it's a new moon. So all that energy feels very new. That live will be a deep dive into how to celebrate Salwin. And we'll be leading with a little ritual meditation, and there'll be lots of little ideas for you. Um, it's just fun and it's free. So look for that. You can if you go to my website, jennycbel.com, it's j-en-n-y-c b e-l-l.com, you can sign up and there'll be like a reminder for you so you don't have to remember for yourself. Um, I still have the deal with Sea Witch Botanicals I talked about last week, where if you use the code JBell13, J B E L L 13, you get 13% off all their Salwin products. They have beautiful smelling salwin incense and candles. Sea Witch has an S-E-A, Sea Witch Botanicals. And then my audiobook is coming out on October 14th. You can pre-order it now, um, wherever you do listen to your audiobooks. Um, but it's called Spirit Crystals: The Secret Discovery, The Secret to Discovering, Your Crystal Guide for Healing, Evolving, and Stepping Into Your Power. Absolutely beautiful. And then also on October 14th, we have Granddaughter Crow teaching us about shamanism in our coven. So she's our first guest, I'm hoping through the first of many. And um, we get to ask her questions. And she's a beautiful person. She's written so many books. She's writing a new book on shamanism, hence why she's coming in there to chat with us. Um, but just such a light, such an out. And her name is Joy, and like really, she truly is a joy. Absolutely adore her. So, anyway, that's all those kind of little things going on. In our coven, we are reading um tarot every which way, unlock the power of the cards for spellcraft and magic by Lilith Dorsey, and I'm really loving it. Like, it's such a fun, different way to look at the tarot, and it's like a deep dive, and there's recipes, and just I feel like I'm I feel like after 20 years, I know the tarot pretty well. But I'm reading the book and I'm learning new things, and I feel like that says a whole lot, actually. Um, and yeah, so and also in our coven, which by the way, if you're interested in joining our coven, you can. You go to jennycbell.com and join us. Try us out for a month if you're like, I don't know, this Jenny girl, she's a little bit strange. Um, and then you can see, and I guarantee you you'll probably stay because we have a really good time in there. Everybody in there is so loving and kind, and um, I talk in there pretty much every day. I'm posting all the time. The um pick a card reading for October is already up. There's lots of things what to do with sowen in there, lots of supplemental uh material. So if you're new to celebrating that Sabbath, it's worth it just for getting all that stuff, trust me. Okay, so speaking of Sowin, I want to talk about it in the all of October. So this is our first October episode, and I brought out dusting, this is me, dusting off a book, my old silver Raven Wolf Halloween spells book. So it's called Halloween Spells, Customs, and Recipes. Let me look at the year. This is an LD but a goodie. Um, I don't even know if it's printed anymore. It came out in 2000. This was the year I graduated high school. So we're gonna start first with She's Got the Witch's Rune in here by Doran Doreen Valentine. Darksome night and shining moon, hearken to the witch's rune, east and south, west and north. Hear me now, I call ye forth. By all the powers of land and sea, be obedient unto me. Wand and pentacle, cup and sword, hearken ye unto my word. Cord and censor, totem and knife, awaken ye all into life. By all the powers of the witch's blade, come ye now as the change is made. Queen of heaven, queen of hell, send your aid onto my spell, horned hunter of the night, work my will, my magic, my right. By all the powers of the land and sea, as I will, so mote it be. By all the might of moon and sun, as I say it, it shall be done. So it's the witch's rune by Doreen Valentine. But I brought this out because I want to talk about divination today. So, what is divination? Divination is anything you do to divine the future. Now, I call myself a fortune teller because I'm uncomfortable with the word psychic or medium, because I feel like everyone you say that, and people expect you to be Tyler Henry. And there's only one Tyler Henry. Do I think I could do what Tyler Henry does? I don't know. I don't want to. I'll tell you that, right? I love that he does it. It takes a lot out of him. If you read books by psychics like him or John Edward or Medical Medium, there's quite a physical toll on what they do. And I'm happy just diving in for people and using cards as a vehicle to do that. That's my preference. Um, have I seen ghosts? Can I do people's loved ones come into readings? Absolutely. Is that my focus? No, because I don't want to do it as my focus. But let's teach his own. So when we talk about Sawin and the Veils Thinning, Thing of the Veils means that the space, the liminal perceived space between living and dead, the dead is thinner. And it's all over the world. So, you know, Day of the Dead is around this time, there's other ancestral veneration at this time in other cultures and history. So when all these different cultures and different places in the world are like, hey, this is a time to honor the dead, they all come together and agree that this is the time. That's pretty important. So the thinning of the veils is the best time for you to get into divination, to try your hand at pomistry or card reading or lot casting. Like, this is the time to try something new if you already do a thing. This is the time to get a reading because the person's probably going to do a better job. Um, I do readings on Etsy. This is a very easy time for me to do readings. I do readings accidentally too at this time. If I'm not careful, I'll be like, hey, your grandma's coming in. Whether the person wanted it or not. Um, and so personally, what I do is I read tarot, I read Oracle, I read Milagros, which are charms, I cast charms. I um when I give Reiki, I have lots of things come through. And I do past life readings, I open the Akashic Records, I dabble here and there. Um I do astrology as a type of fortune telling. I don't do palm reading, and numerology is hard for me because I have this thing where I mix numbers up when I do math. And it didn't get diagnosed till college, so it really would have helped me if someone found out earlier. Thank you to all my teachers that didn't notice. Um, but thank you to the one math teacher that did. But by that point, it was my last math class, and he's like, you know, you do this thing where you like flip your numbers around. It's like, hmm, that explains a lot. Um, so numerology and I were not like besties for that reason. So I like tarot and I like Oracle because I can point to something to give the person a reason why I'm saying that thing. Like, I like that, I like that it backs me up. Because I'm already feeling it, I'm already getting messages through, but then the card is like going along with that, and that's that's good. Because then the person is like, oh, okay, I see it in the card. It's not just like you making it up, and it's almost like it takes away some of the blame if I tell them something that isn't great. So in this Halloween book, she has a way to make a scrying mirror, and so I wanted to share it with you. Let me get a little drink of water. Partly because when I did the Arc Coven reading for the October, one of the groups got scrying, but then there was like other cards connected to scrying, and I was like, I really feel like you should try scrying if you've never done that. So it's the art of basically gazing. Like you remember magic eye puzzles in the 90s? It's like doing that where you let your eyes rest, relax, like called Drishti in yoga, and kind of unfocus and kind of like stare at something, like a crystal ball, a bowl of water, a mirror, flame, uh, smoke, until things come to you. So she says that uh scrying is such an old practice. This is Silver Raven Wolf, by the way, page 91. If you have the book. Scrying is such an old practice that no one knows when the tradition first began. Typically, the crystal ball or magic mirror remained the chosen favorite. In the past 30 years, with the new technologies and glass processing, many magical practitioners have turned to artificially manufactured crystal balls. You can purchase a man-made scrying ball for a reasonable price. I think I spent$18. So this was$2000, so I don't know, quadruple that on the stand and$28 on the ball. Although some pursuits in the magical community, um purists in the magical community, argue that man-made glass balls do not work well. The same number of individuals have experienced great success with the proceeded process globes. So to look into what she's talking about. Oh, pendulum's another one. I didn't talk about that, but pendulum's another easy one to because you can make your own. You can find like I have it on my Pinterest. I had like how to make your own pin pendulum. Um, very easy to do and use, like, with just a necklace. So, and real quick before I know I'm so easily distracted sometimes. But I just have to say that I remember when I was pregnant with my daughter, I had that year I had like a lot of Mexican-American students. It was actually a really fun class because we were at like Esperanza Rising, and I don't know, it was fun, fun, lots of cultural sharing. Anyway, I had the student named Ophelia, and she was like, Can I see what gender your baby is? And I'm like, sure. So she takes off her necklace and she used it as like a pendulum, and she's like, Oh, it's a girl, and she was right. So, anyway, um, for making a magic mirror, you need one convex piece of glass. So, you might need to kind of thrift these things. One convex piece of glass. Convex means it curves outward like an old clock face. A wooden circle, the size of a the clock face. So I'm thinking we buy an old clock and we break it open. Black paint, a mortar and pestle, eye bright herb, wormwood herb, one glass jar, one cup of spring water, one small black cloth or a napkin, cheesecloth or coffee filter and glue. She says, clean the glass, paint two coats of the black enamel on the convex side of the glass. Paint both sides of the wooden circle with two coats of black enamel. Allow to dry thoroughly. Crush the wormwood and eye bright in a mortar and pestle, pour on one cup of spring water into the glass jar, add the herb mixture, cover with black cloth. Let stand for 12 hours. Using cheesecloth, strain and dispose of the herbs, paint over the enamel with the spring water mixture three times. I also think you could use moon water, right? And just charge it with the intention of seeing, because we're looking at Aries as being a time of clarity anyway. So with the moon being Monday, it's kind of perfect. Um, allow to dry thoroughly between applications, glue the glass onto the wooden desk and let dry. And then you have a scrying mirror. So I'm sure there's videos and Pinterest posts on how to make your own scrying mirror if you're interested. But really just getting a bowl of water and um charging it under the moon and then using it to scry would be just perfect and very, very easy. So, yeah, we have um divination. That's this is the time of year. There's lots of things you can do. Like we just talked about making your own scrying thing, you can do a pendulum. I probably like I'm trying to think, I actually recently in a meditation had an invitation by a guide to be more of a medium and connect more with loved ones past. And it's something I'm thinking about. Um, my friend, she does that, and she has the special card deck for that, and she's always spot on. Um I just not sure if I want to go down that road. Not because I'm afraid, let's be clear. Um, like have no problem with that. It's just do I want to offer that service? I don't know. And if I do, maybe it'll just be for myself and loved ones, like the Akashic Records. I don't read those for other people. Uh, I don't get I don't do that for payment. I like to do that just for myself and for others. It's just personal preference. But you know, it is up to you. And then I also have a whole section in the like the last chapter of spirit crystals on how to use the spirit crystals for divination. And so you use the six of them and they can have different meanings and different connections. And after doing them a while, you might even be able to like come up with your own, and you might add some stones in there and be like, okay, I'm gonna add Labradorite, and Labradorite's gonna have this meaning, and and it'll be very much onto your own self. That's what's nice, kind of about curios and casting lots or charms, is it becomes your own set of divination tools, like it's very connected to you, and it's like you know what they mean. Um, but someone else looking on wouldn't have the same understanding or belief, and it makes it very personal and a lot of times easier to read. So I love that. I also got these fun uh fortune-telling sticks. I have a I put them on social media, but and I use them for the R Coven reading, but they're really cool. Uh they just kind of you can make your own their popsicle sticks if you go to my Pinterest. I keep talking about it. Um if you just google jennycbel.com, um, I'm pretty much all over the internet. Uh, but my Pinterest is let's see, J Bell Witch. And it's got my picture, and in there I put these sticks that were from Shachman um company and they're from the 1970s, but I put pictures on them so people can make their own. And so they just have like key phrases and ideas like a letter coming your way or a wish granted, and you can just use those sticks for divination. So I encourage you this week. I'm gonna give you different ideas to celebrate Sawin Halloween throughout the month, but this week I encourage you to do something with divination. So either making your own thing, trying a new thing, um, you know, things like that. I want you to do something with divination, with fortune telling that's maybe a little outside your box. Maybe it's like your first time reading for a friend, uh, you know, something like that. So, first journal question is what kind of divination are you going to try and why? Second question is what do you think is your strongest clair sense? So people who are clairvoyant see clearly, clairsentience is like the feeling, clair audience is hearing, um, there's clair salient where you smell things. So you can, you know, it's in my it's in spirit crystals, but you can look it up as well. But what what do you think is your dominant clair sense and why? And then looking at the full moon, you know, where in your life do you need clarity? And looking at the Queen of Swords. We can kind of talk about like we did last week, power, you know. Where or how do you feel when you stand in your power? What makes you feel like you're standing in your power? When do you feel in power? When do you feel empowered? Right? So lots of things to think about. I think the biggest thing, the biggest takeaway with this time of year with Sawin is to have fun. Like if you want to call it Halloween because you don't want to call it Sawen, great. Do I care? I don't care. Call it Halloween. Do you want to just have fun with your divination and do something silly, like, you know, start counting crows and deciding what that means as no superstition? Do it. Have fun. Play. Part of this journey of being a witch is playing. We are not in a stuffy church for a reason. We want to have fun, we want to create, and it should be fun. And you should be playing and you should enjoy it because it's your path and you chose it. So get out there and play with some fortune telling tools. I hope you have a great week. Blessed be.